Born of God and of Man

But in case there is any doubt in your mind about why we call him Jesus Christ — the one who was born of God before the world, and who was born as a man three hundred years ago — I will explain the reason to you briefly. The same person is the son of God and the son of man. For he was born twice: first of God, in the spirit, before the world began; afterwards in human flesh, in the reign of Augustus. Bound up with this fact is a great and shining mystery, and in it are contained the salvation of men, the religion of the Supreme God, and all truth. [a]

For when the accursed and godless worship of the gods first crept in through the treachery of the demons, the religion of God stayed with the Hebrews alone. They kept the worship that had been handed down to them, not by any law, but in their fathers’ way, passed on from one generation to the next, until the time when they went out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, the first of all the prophets, through whom the law was given to them by God; and after that they were called Jews. So they served God, bound by the chains of the law. But they too, little by little, drifted off into profane rites and took up the worship of strange gods; they left the worship of their father and sacrificed to senseless images.

So God sent them prophets filled with the Divine Spirit, to charge them with their sins and proclaim repentance, to threaten them with the vengeance that would follow, and to announce that if they kept on in the same faults he would send another as the bearer of a new law; and that, having removed an ungrateful people from their inheritance, he would gather to himself a more faithful people out of foreign nations. But they not only kept on — they even killed the messengers themselves. So he condemned them for what they had done, and he no longer sent messengers to a stubborn people. He sent his own Son instead, to call all nations to the favor of God.

Even so, godless and ungrateful as they were, he did not shut them out from the hope of salvation. He sent him to them before anyone else, so that if they should happen to obey they might not lose what they had received; but if they refused to receive their God, then the heirs would be disowned and the Gentiles would come into the inheritance. So the supreme Father ordered him to come down to the earth and to put on a human body, so that, being subject to the sufferings of the flesh, he might teach virtue and endurance not by words only but by deeds as well. That is why he was born a second time as a man, of a virgin, without a father: so that, just as in his first, spiritual birth he was born of God alone and was made a sacred spirit, so in his second, fleshly birth he might be born of a mother only and become holy flesh, and through him the flesh, which had fallen under sin, might be set free from destruction.

The prophets had foretold long ago that all this would happen just as I have set it out. In the writings of Solomon it stands like this: “The womb of a virgin was strengthened and conceived, and a virgin became pregnant and became a mother with great compassion.” In Isaiah it stands like this: “Look, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and you will call his name Immanuel” — which, translated, means God with us. For he was with us on the earth when he took on flesh; and he was no less God in man, and man in God. [e]

That he was both God and man the prophets declared beforehand. That he was God, Isaiah declares like this: “They will fall down before you and plead with you, since God is in you, and we did not know it — the God of Israel. They will be ashamed and confounded, all of them who set themselves against you, and will go away in confusion.” Jeremiah too: “This is our God, and no other can be compared with him. He found out the whole way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved. Afterward he was seen on earth and lived among men.” And that he was a man, the same Jeremiah says: “And he is a man, and who has known him?” Isaiah speaks the same way: “And the Lord will send them a man who will save them, and with judgment he will heal them.” And Moses himself, in the book of Numbers: “A star will come out of Jacob, and a man will rise out of Israel.” This is why, being God, he took flesh upon himself: so that, standing in the middle between God and man, he might overcome death and lead man to God by his own guidance.

We have spoken of his birth; now let us speak of his power and his works. When he did them among men, the Jews saw that they were great and marvelous and supposed that they were done by the art of magic, not knowing that everything he did had been foretold by the prophets. He gave strength to the sick, and to those wasting away under all kinds of disease — not by any healing remedy, but on the instant, by the force and power of his word. He set the weak on their feet again; he made the lame walk; he gave sight to the blind; he made the mute speak and the deaf hear. He cleansed those who were defiled and unclean. He gave their right minds back to men who had been driven mad by the assault of demons. He called back to life and light those who were dead and already buried. He also fed five thousand men with five loaves and two fish, and filled them full. He walked on the sea. In a storm he ordered the wind to be still, and a calm came at once. All of this we find foretold both in the books of the prophets and in the verses of the Sibyls. [l]

When a great crowd flocked to him because of these miracles and believed — as he truly was — that he was the Son of God and sent from God, the priests and rulers of the Jews were filled with envy, and at the same time stirred to anger because he rebuked their sins and their injustice, and they conspired to put him to death. Solomon had foretold that this would happen, a little more than a thousand years earlier, in the book of Wisdom, in these words: “Let us cheat the righteous man, since he is unpleasant to us and reproaches us with our offenses against the law. He boasts that he has the knowledge of God, and he calls himself the Son of God. He has been made an exposure of our own thoughts; it grieves us even to look at him, for his life is not like other people’s and his ways are of another kind. We are counted by him as triflers; he keeps clear of our ways as of filth; he speaks highly of the end of the righteous, and boasts that he has God for his Father. Let us see, then, whether his words are true; let us test what will come to him at the end. Let us examine him with insults and torments, so that we may know how mild he is and may prove his patience; let us condemn him to a shameful death. Such things they imagined, and they went astray, for their own folly blinded them, and they do not understand the hidden purposes of God.”

So, forgetting the very writings they were reading, they stirred up the people against him as though he were a godless man, so that they seized him, led him to trial, and with wicked words demanded his death. But the charge they brought against him as a crime was this very thing: that he said he was the Son of God, and that by healing on the sabbath he broke the law — which he said he did not break but fulfill. And when Pontius Pilate, who then held authority in Syria as legate, saw that the case did not belong to the office of a Roman judge, he sent him to Herod the Tetrarch and allowed the Jews themselves to be the judges of their own law.

They received the power to punish his offense, and sentenced him to the cross. But first they scourged him and struck him with their hands, put a crown of thorns on him, spat in his face, and gave him gall and vinegar to eat and drink; and through all of it not a word was heard to fall from his lips. Then the executioners cast lots for his tunic and his cloak, hung him on the cross, and fastened him to it — though the next day they were going to keep the Passover, that is, their festival. Portents followed that crime, so that they might understand the wickedness they had committed. At the very moment he breathed his last there was a great earthquake, and the sun failed, so that the day was turned into night.

And the prophets had foretold that all these things would come about just so. Isaiah speaks like this: “I am not rebellious, and I do not resist. I gave my back to the whip and my cheeks to the hand; I did not turn my face away from the shame of spitting.” The same prophet says this about his silence: “I was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before its shearers, so he did not open his mouth.” David too, in the thirty-fourth Psalm: “Men with whips were gathered together against me, and they did not know me; they were scattered, and yet they felt no remorse; they tested me and gnashed their teeth at me.” The same David says this about the food and the drink, in the sixty-eighth Psalm: “They gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” And about the cross of Christ: “And they pierced my hands and my feet; they counted all my bones; they themselves looked and stared at me; they divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.” [s]

Moses too says in Deuteronomy: “And your life will hang in doubt before your eyes, and you will be afraid day and night, and will have no assurance of your life.” And in Numbers: “God is not in doubt as a man is, nor does he suffer threats as a son of man does.” Zechariah also says: “And they will look on me whom they pierced.” Amos speaks like this about the darkening of the sun: “In that day, says the Lord, the sun will go down at noon, and the clear day will be dark; and I will turn your feasts into mourning and your songs into lamentation.” And Jeremiah speaks of the city of Jerusalem, where he suffered: “Her sun has gone down while it was still day; she has been put to shame and reviled, and what is left of them I will hand over to the sword.”

And these things were not said for nothing. For after a short time the emperor Vespasian subdued the Jews, laid their lands waste with sword and fire, besieged them and broke them by famine, overthrew Jerusalem, led the captives in his triumph, and forbade the rest, who were left, ever to return to their native land. And all of it was done by God on account of that crucifixion of Christ, as he had declared beforehand to Solomon in their own scriptures, saying: “And Israel will be given over to ruin and to reproach among the peoples, and this house will be desolate; and everyone who passes by will be astonished and will say: Why has God done these evil things to this land and to this house? And they will say: Because they abandoned the Lord their God, and persecuted their King, the one dearly loved by God, and crucified him with great degradation — that is why God has brought these evils upon them.” For what would they not deserve, who put to death their own Lord, who had come for their salvation?

After this they took his body down from the cross and buried it in a tomb. But on the third day, before daybreak, there was an earthquake; the stone with which they had closed the grave was moved away, and he rose. Nothing was found in the tomb except the cloths the body had been wrapped in. That he would rise again on the third day the prophets had foretold long before. David, in the fifteenth Psalm: “You will not leave my soul among the dead, nor will you let your Holy One see corruption.” Hosea likewise: “This son of mine is wise; therefore he will not remain in the anguish of his sons. And I will ransom him from the hand of the grave. Where is your judgment, death? Where is your sting?” And the same prophet again: “After two days he will give us life again, on the third day.” [y]

So after his resurrection he went into Galilee and gathered his disciples again, who had run away in fear. He gave them the commands he wanted kept, and made arrangements for the good news to be proclaimed throughout the whole world; he breathed the Holy Spirit into them and gave them the power to work miracles, so that they might act for people’s good by deeds as well as words. And then at last, on the fortieth day, he returned to his Father, carried up in a cloud. The prophet Daniel had shown this long before, saying: “I saw in the night vision, and there was one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, and he came to the Ancient of Days; and those who stood beside him brought him near before him. And there was given him a kingdom and glory and dominion, and all peoples, tribes and languages will serve him; and his power is everlasting and will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.” And David, in the hundred and ninth Psalm: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”

Since, then, he sits at the right hand of God, and is going to tread down the enemies who tortured him when he comes to judge the world, it is plain that no hope is left to the Jews unless they turn to repentance, are cleansed of the blood they defiled themselves with, and begin to hope in the one they denied. That is why Ezra speaks like this: “This Passover is our Savior and our refuge. Think it over, and let it come into your heart, that we have to bring him low in a sign; and after that we have hoped in him.” [ad]

And that the Jews were disinherited because they rejected Christ, and that we, who are of the Gentiles, were adopted into their place, is proved from the scriptures. Jeremiah speaks like this: “I have abandoned my house, I have given up my inheritance into the hands of its enemies. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest; it has cried out against me, and therefore I have hated it.” Malachi too: “I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. For from the rising of the sun to its going down my name will be great among the nations.” And Isaiah speaks like this: “I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they will come and see my glory.” The same prophet says in another place, speaking in the person of the Father to the Son: “I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and I will hold your hand and keep you, and give you for a covenant of my people and for a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring the prisoners out of the prison and those who sit in darkness out of the prison house.”

If, then, the Jews have been rejected by God, as the trust we owe to the sacred writings shows, and the Gentiles, as we see, have been brought in and set free from the darkness of this present life and from the chains of the demons, it follows that no other hope is held out to a man unless he follows the true religion and the true wisdom, which is in Christ; and the man who does not know him is always a stranger to the truth and to God. And let neither the Jews nor the philosophers flatter themselves about the Supreme God. Anyone who has not acknowledged the Son has been unable to acknowledge the Father. This is wisdom, and this is the mystery of the Supreme God. God willed that he should be acknowledged and worshiped through him, and for that reason he sent the prophets ahead to announce his coming, so that when the things that had been foretold were fulfilled in him, men might then believe that he was both the Son of God and God. [ai]

All the same, no one is to hold the opinion that there are two Gods, for the Father and the Son are one. Since the Father loves the Son and gives all things to him, and the Son faithfully obeys the Father and wills nothing except what the Father does, it is plain that a relationship as close as this cannot be pulled apart, so that two should be spoken of where there is one substance, one will, one faithfulness. So the Son is through the Father, and the Father through the Son. One honor is to be given to both, as to one God, and it is to be so divided in the worship of the two that the division itself is held fast by an unbreakable bond of union. A man who separates the Father from the Son, or the Son from the Father, will leave nothing for himself.

It remains to answer those as well who think it unfitting and unreasonable that God should be clothed with a mortal body; that he should be in subjection to men; that he should put up with insults; that he should even endure tortures and death. I will say what I think, and sum up an immense subject in as few words as I can. Anyone who teaches something ought, I think, to practice it himself, so that he can compel men to obey. If he does not practice it, he takes away from the trust owed to his own rules. So examples are needed, to give the rules that are laid down their firmness; and if anyone digs in his heels and says that they cannot be carried out in practice, the teacher may refute him by the deed itself. So a system of teaching cannot be perfect when it is handed over in words only; it becomes perfect when it is completed by deeds. [al]

Since, then, Christ was sent to men as a teacher of virtue, it was plainly fitting, for the perfecting of his teaching, that he should act as well as teach. But if he had not taken on a human body, he would not have been able to practice what he taught — that is, not to be angry, not to want riches, not to burn with lust, not to be afraid of pain, to think nothing of death. These are plainly virtues, but they cannot be done without flesh. So he took on a body for this reason: since he taught that the cravings of the flesh must be overcome, he might first practice it in his own person, so that no one could plead the frailty of the flesh as an excuse.